Being young is hard. Every adult laughs when a child claims they can’t wait to grow up. And every adult wants to be a kid again, with all the carefree adventures and decisions that mostly don’t matter. “Don’t wish away your youth too fast kid, you’ll end up missing it soon enough,” the experienced always seem to say. They’re right, of course. You will want to re-live every part of it, but that’s only after you’ve figured everything out. If there were an option to go back ten years from the point of college graduation, with all knowledge still intact, would you take it? Because then you would know how to right all the wrongs, ace all the failed tests, change your nervous mumble to a confident statement.
That’s not possible though. People get only one chance to figure out how life works, which is why being young sucks sometimes. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s way more good than there is bad.)
Children are full of insecurities, which keeps them in a comfort bubble. Everyone says to step out of it — try a sport, learn an instrument, make friends — as if any of that is simple. Growing up is full of new surprises and most of them we don’t know how to deal with. A first relationship, for example. Do you hold their hand? Bring them roses or open up the car door? How much eye contact is too much eye contact, and how long until you know it’s going down?
Entering a new school, such as college, where everyone is new and the points do matter. Making the conscious effort to apply yourself fully and be personally responsible like you’ve never had to do before. It’s hard, and it’s scary, but perhaps the most frightening part (which takes up so much mental space) is figuring out what you love to do, enough to study it for four years and make a career out of it for the rest of your life. It’s daunting.
But that’s why we love it so much.
The fear and abundance of questions you need to answer, are what the adults are saying you’ll miss so much, or so I’d like to think (I’m still trying to figure it out myself). It’s no fun reading a predictable book, right? If it were, we’d all have our lives planned out until the day we die.
The point of going through all this is to find your particular niche and to say you discovered it under an enormous pile of trial and error. It makes finding your passion so rewarding. And when you’ve found it, you may realize it’s just the beginning. Now it’s onto figuring out how to make it unique, how to separate yourself from all the others who found the same thing.
“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” — Salvador Dalí
If the chance to go back existed, I would argue that most would say no. Because being young is all about learning how to build that foundation of self. It’s taken so much effort to get to where we are. It’s who we are, and I promise you, even at a ripe old age the questions will be just as heavy just in a different way.
Every step of your life will be a new experience, and for some it may be scary as hell, but that fear you feel for all the unknown is one of the best parts. Try to appreciate it, rather than shy away. I’m sure as hell going to try.
